Friday. Overcast, but again they're saying sun later, not a bad combination. Let's you sleep soundly under the covers and still have t-shirt weather by late morning or early afternoon. To bed last night at a decent hour, up this morning with the alarm. To breakfast and back without incident, my waitress bringing me three boxes of Chinese cookies in appreciation for my unbroken string of breakfasts and the occasional lunch, along with what I guess are outrageous tips. If she wasn't young enough to be my daughter I'd marry the woman. But she is and I'm not.

Enough guitar practice last night, I'd guess. Just the scales as I was watching whatever it was I was watching on TV, but I seem to recall it went on and on without particular effort. More like obsession than something more benign, but OK with that. Feels OK. I remember it was the sequel to the Inspector Morse series, his side kick carrying on, a murder set in oh so seriously class stratified Oxford. Some of these I find I'm unable to watch, this one tolerable in that I lasted through to the end.

I'm obviously (even to me) too persnickety anymore in my declining years, way too sensitive to things I watched once with mindless interest and equilibrium, I'm no one who's opinions you should pay attention to when it comes to television (or the movies, music or much of anything else, I'm afraid). Or did you get that when I started talking about Korean soaps? Ah. Yes, I suspect you did.

Carnaval coming up Sunday morning, good, I can use the pictures. Adventures in the big city. I need to do more research as to what may be happening tomorrow. Photographing the parade takes most of whatever stamina I may have out of me for one day, I don't go on to photograph the street festival that follows, but doesn't it run Saturday, the day before the parade as well? Might I not photograph it tomorrow? So many choices for one so limited in his horizons, but we'll see. We're not dead yet. I don't think. Perhaps I'm not paying enough attention.

Later. I keep following this particular site watching the arctic ice shrink ever faster. More obsessive behavior. They say our unusually cool Spring is a piece of the mid-western states tornado puzzle, a function of the la Niña, la Niño cycle, the cold air coming off the Pacific ending up over the mid-west causing the wind shear that creates tornados. Heat-cold, the greater the heat, the more energy in the system, the bigger the blow. A taste of what's to come with global warming.

I know, we don't need any more about that, but we are living in interesting times. The tsunami's in Asia, the reactor melt downs, the storms in Pakistan, the Russian heat wave, the ongoing financial-employment crisis, a tornado that did its best to obliterate Joplin, various revolutions and wars, too many to follow.

Makes me wonder if I should stop reading the morning news, makes me wonder how all this background stuff affects my otherwise sunny disposition? Not nearly as much as the effect of the double vision I'd imagine, unless we get a twister here coming in off Lake Merritt. Goose feathers everywhere. Oh, hell, right: the earthquake. Best to stop right now, keep the focus on upcoming photograph-able events and whether or not to have a glass or two of sake with dinner. Stop wondering, as I'm drifting off to sleep in the evenings, if those two book cases with all those heavy books right there against the wall beside my bed will fall harmlessly or less than harmlessly come the big tilt.

Later still. A walk down the way to look through the book store noting titles I'd have bought twenty years ago without thinking, but understood I'd never read more than a few pages today. Not that they weren't good books, just that my reading ambitions have pretty much deflated. Who knows, maybe they'll return, maybe they won't, other things have taken their place. Maybe I'm not looking anymore for whatever it was I thought I might find when I was younger, perhaps, if I thought about it, some of those secrets were found.

More goslings as I passed by the lake. The larger goslings I photographed yesterday, those same goslings were there today but with another brood now newly out of their eggs foraging for whatever it is they find in the grass. I wished I'd brought a longer lens, wished (but not too hard) I had the gumption to get down lower for a better angle. Wished, wished. To be honest I did whatever I did and was happy with it, no excuses. My thought was to pick up another camera with that longer lens and go back when I got home just now, but I won't, and if I do we'll see results here a paragraph or so later.

Still quite overcast just before noon, I'm thinking a nap. I read an article in the Times this morning saying a major study they've just completed on the combination of the Statin drug Zocor and Niaspan has shown the addition of Niaspan has no added benefit and, if fact, those who take it have a greater chance of a stroke. The prescription I called in earlier this week was for Niaspan, which I take with Zocor, and I was to pick it up later today.

I think it costs me something like a hundred bucks for a three month supply (or is that the Zocor?), which I'd just as soon not have to pay. My cholesterol is lower than low as it is, my “good cholesterol” very good indeed, and I've never been happy with the Niaspan side effects, although they tend to be sporadic. Do you trust your doctor? Well, pretty much, but I think Niaspan is now in the history bin.

Be interesting to see if there are other side effects I didn't understand were caused by Niaspan, apart from the usual ones I and others have experienced, after I've been off it for a while. One less pill on the list, one less check to write every ninety days, one less task to screw up amid these days of mind bending excitement.

Enough, already. OK, I did pick up another camera with a long lens, found the goslings and took more pictures. For some reason, in testing the ISO and aperture, I thought I was shooting at close to a 300th of a second and found after, in examining the files, I was shooting at something like a sixtieth of a second. Not a clever move for a photographer. Still, we did get closer.

Having proven myself wrong, having gotten out and over to the lake, I decided to celebrate with another sushi lunch, but with a small single serving of sake this time. A good plan, feel good, maybe spend the rest of the day on the guitar. Or goofing off. Or babbling on interminably here.